question about Postfix

[Mel]

On Wednesday 03 October 2007 01:23:25 jekillen wrote:
> On Oct 1, 2007, at 8:04 PM, Duane Hill wrote:
> > On Mon, 1 Oct 2007 at 19:50 -0700, jekillen at prodigy.net confabulated:
> >> Hello;
> >> I have a quick question about Postfix.
> >> When I install Free BSD and have it
> >> include Postfix  from packages, does
> >> the install process completely replace
> >> Sendmail with Postfix, or do I still have
> >> to replace Sendmail with Postfix separately?
> >> Thanks in advance
> >> Jeff K
> >
> > If you install Postfix from the ports collection:
> >
> >   /usr/ports/mail/postfix
> >
> > toward the end of the install process, it will ask you if you wish for
> > the install to make changes in /etc/mail/mailer.conf. You tell it yes.
> > If it did not ask, /etc/mail/mailer.conf should look like this:
> >
> > sendmail        /usr/local/sbin/sendmail
> > send-mail       /usr/local/sbin/sendmail
> > mailq           /usr/local/sbin/sendmail
> > newaliases      /usr/local/sbin/sendmail
> >
> > This is what so-to-speak "plugs" Postfix into the OS.
> >
> > To totally disable SendMail from running at startup after a reboot,
> > you have to make some additions to the /etc/rc.conf config file.
> > Namely, you have to add:
> >
> > sendmail_enable="NO"
> > sendmail_submit_enable="NO"
> > sendmail_outbound_enable="NO"
> > sendmail_msp_queue_enable="NO"
> >
> > Also, there are some periodic things that are ran which are SendMail
> > specific that need to be disabled. That is done within
> > /etc/periodic.conf as such:
> >
> > daily_clean_hoststat_enable="NO"
> > daily_status_mail_rejects_enable="NO"
> > daily_status_include_submit_mailq="NO"
> > daily_submit_queuerun="NO"
>
> O.K. This is something I have not been aware of. As far as MTA's on any
> system I am somewhat of a newbe. I do get regular e-mails to the root
> accounts of my
> various (four) systems when they are running constantly, (two are) and
> I have been wondering how a switch over will effect that.
> I will need to do a system specific configuration of postfix and define
> system specific aliases, prevent public use of the servers for open
> relaying and such.

Actually, all you need to do is run `newaliases' after mailer.conf is 
correctly setup. By default postfix does not relay mail not destined for the 
local machine. Any other configuration you do, is merely adding more 
restrictions for getting spammed yourself and less restrictions if you need 
trusted machines to relay via you (like the local network).

The thing to watch out for is mergemaster, when you upgrade your base system. 
If /etc/mail/mailer.conf has been changed in FreeBSD's sources, it will 
prompt you to merge the changes.
Also, some new defaults might get set in /etc/defaults/rc.conf that trigger 
new sendmail daemons to start up at boot time, this is why using 
sendmail_enable="NONE" is better then turning off every known sendmail 
option.

-- 
Mel